T-Mobile has big plans for MLB All-Star Week in Seattle, WNBA stars plan to launch an offseason league and the NBA and FIBA have international growth plans via the NBA 2K League.
For most fans, MLB All-Star Game festivities won't kick in until next week in Seattle, but there's an event tonight at T-Mobile Park as the inaugural HBCU Swingman Classic will feature a game between players from Division I programs at HBCUs. It starts at 10:30 PM Eastern and will be broadcast live on MLB Network. MLB Youth Development Foundation Ambassador Ken Griffey Jr. is one of the creators of this event, and two of the coaches for the game will be his father, Ken Griffey Sr., and Florida A&M alum Andre Dawson. The broadcast will include Mariners voice Dave Sims, former Mariner and MLB network analyst Harold Reynolds, and HBCU Sports journalist Symone Stanley.
Good morning. It's Friday, July 7th. This is your SBJ Morning Buzzcast. I'm David Albright, filling in for Abe Madkour. When it comes to sponsor activation around the MLB All-Star game, this year's story centers on T-Mobile, an MLB corporate sponsor since 2013, which has the Midsummer Classic in its hometown of Seattle and played in a ballpark it has titled since 2018. Reports are, Terry Lefton, one of the most intriguing parts of T-Mobile's most recent MLB renewal is connecting its technology and brand to robotic umpiring. When that technology will come to MLB games is unclear, but T-Mobile will be testing a version of it at Saturday's Futures Game. Additional T-Mobile highlights include pushing in augmented reality feature of the MLB Next app, through which fans can track balls in Monday's Home Run Derby, offering an NIL deal to a player in the HBCU Swingman Classic. The annual All-Star game red carpet show will take on T-Mobile's magenta color this year, and the cell service provider is behind a branded headphone gate premium for Monday's Home Run Derby. T-Mobile is also underwriting the Derby After Dark party after the competition.
Retail activation includes player appearances and personalized bats at a downtown retail location. Content plays for T-Mobile include a 32nd spot on how T-Mobile has impacted the game of baseball and a 15-second integration during the All-Star game with Ken Griffey Jr. and Sr. to be shot at Club Magenta inside T-Mobile Park. It also has a new spot with Mariners center fielder, Julio Rodriguez, who is slated to participate in the home run Derby that T-Mobile has titled since 2016.
Georgia Tech has been in discussions regarding the potential sale of naming rights to the field at Bobby Dodd Stadium at historic Grant Field. Automaker Hyundai, which is building a $5.5 billion electric vehicle plant near Savannah, is the corporation with interest in purchasing the rights. The name of the stadium is not for sale. A person familiar with the situation said just the name of the field. That's according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Among ACC programs, Louisville, Syracuse, Wake Forest, Pittsburgh, and Miami have sold naming rights to their respective stadiums, while Vanderbilt, Kentucky, and the SEC have sold naming rights to their respective venues.
Breanna Stewart of the New York Liberty and Napheesa Collier of the Minnesota Lynx are founding a new women's basketball league to give the top WNBA players another option for playing domestically in the offseason once the league's new prioritization rules go into full effect next season. The new league called Unrivaled would run from January through March and feature 30 of the top professional women's players on six teams playing games of three on three and one-on-one at a soundstage in Miami. The goal is to raise enough in private funding and sponsorships to provide the players commensurate pay with what they make during the WNBA season, that would help offset the lucrative contracts they'd be giving up overseas because of new league rules requiring players to return from international commitments by the start of WNBA training camps.
The NBA sees competitive video gaming as the latest tool to aid in its international growth plans, as reflected in its new official partnership with FIBA to amplify NBA 2K League efforts beyond North America. Reports are, Hunter Cook, social media data played a key role in developing the strategy. More than two-thirds of the NBA's social media followers are from outside of the US, per data from the league, and 2K is a growing game in key markets. The NBA and Take-Two Interactive in the fall enticed Australia based National Basketball League to invest in the 2K League, giving the NBL the expansion Oz Gaming franchise in part based on the international social media metrics. Oz Gaming was actually the third squad in NBA 2K League to have non-NBA ownership joining teams based in Mexico City and Shanghai.
The new NBA 2K portion of the FIBA partnership also aims to identify player talent in FIBA-governed regions and will assist in adding players to the 2K league. Additionally, there will be a new international team competition that will run outside of the 2K League season. In the past, the 2K League has assisted FIBA in finding players that wanted to play in their national events. As part of the partnership, International NBA 2K competitions featuring national basketball federations are on the horizon. As for FIBA, the governing body is looking to add more national basketball federations and national teams into the competitive gaming ecosystem.
NBCUniversal is getting a major C-Suite shakeup as Comcast President Mike Cavanagh is giving expanded responsibilities to executives Donna Langley, Mark Lazarus, and Cesar Conde. Lazarus will be chair of the NBCUniversal Media Group, which will include oversight of advertising and distribution as well as the business operations of the TV networks, streaming platforms, and NBC Sports. Langley, the chair of Universal Filmed Entertainment Group, will now oversee all content for the company, including for streaming and TV. Her new title will be chair of the NBCUniversal Studio Group and Chief Content Officer. Conde, the chair of NBC News Group, will add oversight of Telemundo, this company's Spanish-language division, as well as the company's local TV business. The moves come a little more than two months after the firing of NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell.
That's your SBJ Morning Buzzcast for Friday. I hope everyone has a great day, an even better weekend, and we'll see you back here Monday morning.